China Blue: Photinus Biomimeticus

January 31 – March 16, 2013
Opening Event: Thursday, January 31, 6-8pm

This event is free and open to the public.

China Blue is an artist who captures the tenor of our times by transforming common electronic waste into biomimetic artwork with an environmental focus that also sings. In Firefly Tree, one of her works shown at AC Institute, she translates the firefly’s rhythmic signaling pattern into sound (the Firefly Chorus) and light (blinking LEDs). Today fireflies are threatened due to habitat encroachment and light pollution, making memories of fireflies more precious
as the illumination of the cities and towns overwhelm their delicate mating light show.

The rhythmic pattern of the firefly calls is a significant component of the Firefly Tree. This pattern is featured by the data sonification of the Firefly Chorus and the data visualization controlling the LED’s blinking rate. This dual reference underscores the biomimetic nature of the work both visually and acoustically while providing an original and imaginative way of simultaneously injecting both form and content.

Firefly Tree was Nominated 2012 Best Monographic Museum Show, Nationally by the International Association of Art Critics, and Awarded 2012 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in New Genres. The work was also reviewed by Ed Rubin in Sculpture Magazine's November 2012 issue.

BIO:
China Blue is a two time NASA/RI Space Grant recipient a RISCA Fellowship, New Genres recipient and an internationally exhibiting artist who was the first person to record the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France and NASA’s Vertical Gun in Moffitt Field, CA. She represented the US at OPEN XI, Venice, Italy an exhibition held in conjunction with the Architecture Biennale. Reviews of her work have been published in the New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, artCritical and Sculpture magazine to name a few. She has been interviewed by France 3 (TV), for the film “Com-mu-nity” produced by the Architecture Institute of America and was the featured artist for the 2006 annual meeting of the Acoustic Society of America. She has been an invited speaker at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Berkelee School of Music, Reed College and Brown University and an adjunct professor and Fellow at Brown University. She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Engine Institute, Inc. (www.theengineinstitute.org) a non-profit dedicated to promoting the nexus of art, science and technology.

www.chinablueart.com